The Bloc Blah Vote

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

To add a personal note, when I lived in Wisconsin, I was usually part of the annual August 15th migration (you can google “Madison August 15” if you’re not familiar)…I’m pretty sure I registered on-site for every election I voted in up there. It was very easy, very effective…and if Scott Walker has his way, no longer an option.

Share this:

Like this:

Related

10 thoughts on “The Bloc Blah Vote”

Though, as a poll worker as well as a voter etc, I an TOTALLY in favor of continuing same-day registration, Aug 15th Madison moving day without same-day would not mean those movers wouldn’t be able to vote in an August/September primary. They would be eligible to vote at their old address.
And if same-day registration is eliminated, by Federal law it MUST be replaced by ‘motor-voter’ registration, meaning the number of places they could go to re-register would be greatly increased.
Republicans don’t like ‘motor-voter’ either, so I expect in the end nothing happens to ‘same-day registration. But we’re watching closely, nonetheless.

I fully understand that a lot of the voter registration laws are attempts to prevent voters from “those people” from voting. I’m from GA and had high school teachers who were black and related times of being prevented from voting by literacy tests (even though they were college grads), etc. I’ve seen efforts to keep eligible people from registering by making it difficult.
However, I can understand the worries on the lack of control on same-day registration. However, in what seems a simple control: When you vote here, they slap a sticker on your clothes with a flag and the caption “I voted”. (Frankly they are quite overzealous and do it in a way that could be considered assault and battery. But I don’t mind having the sticker and it is easy enough to remove it).
Instead, why not do like other countries and when someone votes, have them dip their thumbs in indellible ink? Would be the same as a sticker saying that I’ve voted (hence the communal celebration of democracy). We don’t have the squads going around shooting people that have voted.
Only problem then is working out what to do with this and getting the benefits of an extended voting period.

“If the postcard isn’t returned to sender, your vote counts, if it is, your vote doesn’t count. Simple…and effective.”
Not quite.
With same-day registration, your vote counts regardless of what happens with that card. There’s no way to ‘track’ that particular ballot back to that particular same-day registrant. To do that, same-day voter ballots would have to be cast as provisional ballots (which *would* become the burden for poll workers and clerks employees that Walker says same-day registration now is).
If the card sent out by the GAB to the registrant’s address is returned as undeliverable, that person’s registration is cancelled. That happens for all registrations, no matter if same-day or otherwise. If the card is for a same-day registrant – meaning their vote might have been cast fraudulently – the GAB and/or Clerk’ office can investigate because the registration form also requires (in almost all cases) either a valid WI Drivers License or DMV Voter ID card number, or the last four digits of the person’s Social Security Number, as well as the account number or similar info from whatever residency document the person presented.
(And of course, sometimes cards are sent out to incorrect addresses because of simple human error in reading handwriting or transcribing handwriting into ‘the computer’. Same-day registration protects the ‘victim’ of such human error; you fill out a registration in good faith, somebody botches the data entry, the card is undeliverable, you show up at the polls and are not ‘on the list’. With same-day, you simple “re”-register.)

Thanks Robert…yeah, now that you mention it, I should have realized you can’t track the vote, just the registration.
That said, it seems like trying to fraudulently register enough voters to make any difference would be a pretty steep hill to climb.

mapleStreet –
That’s one of the things that happened in Florida in 2000; people showed up to vote, found that their names were not on the voter roster, and were simply sent home. They had no recourse whatsoever. They didn’t get to vote.
As a result, the federal ‘Help America Vote Act’ made it a requirement that states offer provisional ballots to anyone who isn’t on the roster but who believe they are supposed to be. You can’t just ‘disappear’ without any recourse.
In WI same-day registration essentially makes that provisional requirement unnecessary – in four year of working at the polls, I’ve never seen a provisional ballot used at ‘my’ polling place. If people somehow get dropped off the roster (and that does happen occasionally), they just same-day register.

When I originally commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get four e-mails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service? Thank you!

@RobertEarle,
Don’t think that we’re that far apart. In the long term I’d like to see extended balloting times of at least a few weeks. I’d like to see internet voting but have severe security concerns (the govt being caught with top secret info on unsecured servers in the military down to the bored yawn of various states for the security of their electronic voting machines; that my local govt uses scanners to record the votes – but doesn’t give me a slip of paper like a cassh register receipt showing what the machine recorded so that I know that the machine read accurately and didn’t miss anything due to my going outside the lines. But at least that is potentially auditable because they can go back and visually count the paper ballots).
I freely admit that in reality(as opposed to in the minds of Faux News), the evidence for people going to a polling place and voting when they shouldn’t show only a very scant number of cases. If I were to try to rig the vote, I’d do it at some place where I could have a bigger effect such as at least the county headquarters and preferably the state HQ. Only in rare cases will the occaisional improper voter have a big enough effect to change the results. Plus so many of the voter verification schemes being introduced have the clear goal of getting rid of certain classes of potential voters.
My concern though, and where I think we differ, is that if it is so easy to come up with a plausible way for some theoretical person to vote improperly (or to stop someone from voting – it works both ways) then look out for folks screaming conspiracy. As well as needing to look for a better way.

In Madison the process for same day registration (at least when I was living there) is pretty simple — you locate your precinct, show up, fill out a form with your name and address (bring proof of residence, like a utility bill, etc.), and vote. The registrar confirms your address by mailing a postcard. If the postcard isn’t returned to sender, your vote counts, if it is, your vote doesn’t count. Simple…and effective.

So the evidence is in the open press.
Any chance that this will actually be used to investigate and result in charges and/or federal judicial action against the state in general and for voter fraud for those involved?